Educating Responsible Citizens; Intercultural Competence and Aesthetic Education

• The article is a joint product of researchers working within different disciplines and with different kinds of knowledge interests, but united by a common interest in the question of how aesthetic education can lead to intercultural competence and education of responsible citizens. What characterizes aesthetic education and how can a clarification of pedagogical tools of such education help us clarify intercultural competence as a learning goal? What are the connections between intercultural education and aesthetic education and how can the latter contribute to the former? Our approach to these issues is a practical one. This means that our efforts are focused on a critical investigation of the conditions of the possibility of intercultural education. Our main argument in the article is that the core of intercultural competence is of a particular type, is active rather than passive and open to radically different experiences than our own. Having this starting point, we in the first step identify some tools through which intercultural competence and education can be made possible. The notions of aesthetic education and empathy are among these tools. Identifying these tools, we in the next step connect the identified tools to basic impediments in the way of intercultural education like that of obstacles for intercultural competence to take form like hidden prejudices of educators in order to remove them and clear the way for intercultural education. As a result of these two steps, educators engaged in, and pupils educated by intercultural education, become empowered. They are then enabled to clarify their hidden prejudices and counteract them instead of being steered by them. They also become empathetic and “responsible citizens”.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Lärande (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Learning (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Kulturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Cultural Studies (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Övrig annan humaniora (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Other Humanities not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)